Aichi Arts Center , Nagoya City, Japan
July 30 – October 10, 2022
We are pleased to announce that Arakawa and Madeline Gins will be participating in the Aichi Triennale 2022 “STILL ALIVE”.
For more information, visit https://aichitriennale.jp/en/
Reversible Destiny NOW! Living Body Museum in Yoro
Yoro Park’s 30th Anniversary Event
Site of Reversible Destiny – Yoro Park
1298ｰ2 Takabayashi, Yoro, Yoro District, Gifu
503-1267, Japan
Program Dates: October 25, 2025 through November 17, 2025
On October 4, 2025, the Site of Reversible Destiny – Yoro Park marks a major milestone as it celebrates its 30th anniversary. The park presents Reversible Destiny NOW! Living Body Museum in Yoro, a vibrant program of installations, performances, and workshops that expand upon the radical ideas of Arakawa and Madeline Gins. From November 1st to 3rd, renowned artists Neon Dance, Shinji Ohmaki, and evala deliver special collaborative performances, followed by a commemorative ceremony on November 3rd. Since its opening in 1995, the site continues to challenge visitors’ perceptions through its undulating terrain and disorienting structures, inviting all who enter to explore new possibilities of the body.
For more information, please visit https://lbm.architectural-body.com/
Madeline Gins: Infinite Systems
Exhibition at Hessel Museum of Art
CCS Bard Hessel Museum of Art
33 Garden Rd
Annandale-On-Hudson, NY 12504
On view from April 5, 2025 through May 25, 2025
Public reception: Saturday, April 5, 1-4 PM
“Infinite Systems presents works by the artist-architect-poet Madeline Gins (1941–2014). The exhibition—the first solo presentation on Gins—shifts the focus from her collaborations with her husband, Arakawa, under the moniker Arakawa+Gins, to her rarely shown independent practice. A selection of her writing and visual works from the 1960s to the 2000s, many exhibited for the first time, are displayed alongside archival materials, including ephemera, manuscripts, and photographs drawn from the Reversible Destiny Foundation.” – Charlotte Youkilis, Curator.
We are excited to share that Madeline Gins will have her moment to shine thanks to CCS Bard College. As mentioned above, rarely seen works from her own creative practice will be showcased through drawings, paintings, and poems alongside archival materials. The exhibition will also be accompanied by a publication with contributions from friends; Susan Bee, Lucy Ives, Tausif Noor, and Aviva Silverman.
For more information, please visit https://ccs.bard.edu/museum/exhibitions/1052-madeline-gins-infinite-systems.
A Rose Is
Exhibition at the FLAG Art Foundation
FLAG Art Foundation
545 W 25th St #9
New York, NY 10001
On view from February 27, 2025 through June 21, 2025
Opening reception: Thursday, February 27, 6-8 PM
“The FLAG Art Foundation is pleased to announce A Rose Is, an expansive group exhibition that examines the ubiquity and multivalent meaning of the rose throughout art history and visual culture. Across a wide array of media, including video, sculpture, painting, and text, the exhibition considers the rose in all of its symbolic and ritual complexity, ultimately seeking to complicate our familiarity with it as a vehicle for consumption and desire.”
Arakawa’s painting And/Or in Profile No. 2, 1974, will be presented alongside artists including Cy Twombly, Louise Bourgeois, Andy Warhol, Lee Krasner, George Platt Lynes, and others. As the exhibition suggests, the literary and linguistic life of the rose is perceived within this juxtaposing piece. Please join us in defining what #ARoseIs.
For more information, https://www.flagartfoundation.org/exhibitions/aroseis
Big Apple’s Littlest Bites: Coming of Age on Film in NYC
BAM Rose Cinemas, Brooklyn Academy of Music
30 Lafayette Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11217
To commence at 3:45 pm on Nov 10, 2024
The Reversible Destiny Foundation is happy to announce the screening of the 1971 film For Example (A Critique of Never) at BAM Rose Cinemas, Brooklyn, New York, as part of the series Big Apple’s Littlest Bites: Coming of Age on Film in NYC.
Directed by Arakawa, and written together with Madeline Gins, the feature-length film is a great example of their creative collaboration that gives insight into their early works. It premiered at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1971, and bridged the New York conceptual art movement with the radical experimental film community of that period. In his book Film as a Subversive Art, film critic and historian Amos Vogel described it as “unquestionably a major work of the American Avant-Garde of the seventies”.
As Arakawa describes it in a contemporaneous letter, “the young boy searches for ways to be in the world. He is abandoned and so must find out by himself. What he demonstrates after all is poetry of action. The child happens to live on the Bowery. His experiments take place there and in the neighborhood playground.” Through the voice of Madeline Gins and the lens of Arakawa, For Example (A Critique of Never) invites viewers to re-envision the backdrop of NYC as extensions of themselves.
We are excited to share the newly restored version of the 16mm feature-length film for the first time in theaters. The screening will be followed by a Q&A with special guests.
The event is ticketed and open to the public. For more information, visit https://www.bam.org/film/2024/big-apples-littlest-bites-for-example.
Nov 8—14, 2024
Big Apple’s Littlest Bites: Coming of Age on Film in NYC
Programmed by Jessica Green
@ BAM Rose Cinemas (30 Lafayette Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11217)
Growing up in New York City is an experience as distinct as it is varied—and arguably no city on the planet is more imagined or documented in film. The films in Big Apple’s Littlest Bites capture in one way or another, or are in serious conversation with, coming of age in the Big Apple. The experiences, aesthetics, and ideas in these fiction films, documentaries, experimental, and short films range from sweet as apple pie and just what the doctor ordered to rotten to the core. The series includes well-known and new classics about being a kid in the big city, along with forgotten and unknown gems that all have something to say.
The series includes: Old Enough (Dir. Marisa Silver, 1984), Free Time (Dir. Manfred Kirchheimer, 2019), The Central Park Five (Dirs. Ken Burns, Sarah Burns & David McMahon, 2012), Rich Kids (Dir. Robert M. Young, 1979), Juice (Dir. Ernest R. Dickerson, 1992), Just Another Girl on the I.R.T (Dir. Leslie Harris, 1992), For Example: A Critique of Never (Dir. Arakawa, 1971), The Squid and the Whale (Dir. Noah Baumbach, 2005), The Window (Dir. Ted Tetzlaff, 1949), Fame (Dir. Alan Parker, 1980), The Long Night (Dir. Woodie King Jr., 1976), Crooklyn (Dir. Spike Lee, 1994), Aaron Loves Angela (Dir. Gordon Parks Jr., 1975), Punching the Sun (Tanuj Chopra, 2006) and a shorts program.
For more information, visit https://www.bam.org/film/2024/big-apples-littlest-bites.
Image: For Example (A Critique of Never), directed by Arakawa, 1971, 90 minutes, black and white 16mm film
We are happy to announce the international conference AGxKANSAI 2022: Art and Philosophy in the 22nd Century After ARAKAWA+GINS, organized jointly by the Studies of the Architectural Body Research Group at Kansai University and Kyoto University of the Arts. The event will take place on March 11–15, 2022 at Kyoto University of the Arts with a combination of in-person and virtual presentations and a live broadcast of all sessions available online. Registration is now open through the conference website!
AGxKANSAI 2022: Art and Philosophy in the 22nd Century After ARAKAWA+GINS
Date: March 11–15, 2022
Venue: Kyoto University of the Arts, Kyoto, Japan (on-site and online)
Website: https://www2.kansai-u.ac.jp/agx2022/
Building on the issues and themes explored at previous Arakawa and Gins conferences (AG1: University of Paris X, 2005; AG2: University of Pennsylvania/Slought Foundation, 2008: and AG3 Online/Columbia University/Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 2010), AGxKANSAI 2022 will explore the shape of art and philosophy toward/in the 22nd century through lectures, dialogues, presentations, exhibitions, and performances. “After ARAKAWA+GINS” signifies our desire to follow after their future-forward vision even after their untimely demise.
The conference opens on March 11th with a conversation between Takashi Ikegami and Yasuo Kobayashi, followed in the afternoon by a virtual tour of the exhibition, the first on-site paper session, a conversation between Hideo Kawamoto and Naohiko Mimura, and an online lecture by Adrienne Hart. From March 12th, various programs will take place including round-tables, research presentations, and workshops by Arakawa and Gins researchers from Japan and abroad. A reproduced version of Arakawa’s early installation work Bottomless I (SOCIOUS),1963, will be on view in conjunction with the event.
Please do not forget to register in advance!
Bottom image: Arakawa, Bottomless I (SOCIOUS), 1963,
acrylic panel, cloth, mirror, steel, steel mesh, steel wire, string, and thread, 41 x 100 x 100 in.
Reversible Destiny Foundation is pleased to announce that the International edition of the Documentary Films Childen Who Won’t Die and We, directed by Nobu Yamaoka, is now available for purchase online.
The two documentary films explore in depth the life and works of Arakawa and Madeline Gins, including interviews with the artists, their friends, professionals from various disciplines as well as the residents of Arakawa+Gins’s architectural works.
For purchase information: https://www.architectural-body.com
Film 1: Children Who Won’t Die, ARAKAWA
Language: Japanese / Subtitle: English, Japanese
Running Time: 80mins
Can a house help us not to die? Artists/scientists/revolutionaries Madeline Gins and Shusaku Arakawa declared that our lives need not end, and created dwellings whose purpose is to reverse our destiny and defy death itself.
The Reversible Destiny Lofts in Tokyo, with their vivid colors, undulating floors, irregular lines, and spherical rooms were the culmination of their research and speculation. Arakawa said, “Living here, human beings will never die, as the potential ability of their bodies can be maximally developed.” This film includes interviews with residents of the Reversible Destiny Lofts and an astrophysicist, as well as growth records of children who were raised in these remarkable buildings. Children Who Won’t Die proudly sings a celebration of life, highlighting the possibilities of a world no one could ever have imagined before.
Cast:
Shusaku Arakawa
Haruo Saji
Yuma Yamaoka
Sono Yamaoka
Residents of Reversible Destiny Lofts Mitaka
Director: Nobu Yamaoka
Music: Keiichiro Shibuya
Narrator: Tadanobu Asano
Film 2: WE, Madeline Gins
Language: English / Subtitle: Japanese
Running time: 60 mins
How does the body meet the future? Madeline Gins – poet, architect, visionary – talks about the origin of creation, its secrets, and the future of humanity. This film documents a visit with her to her studio and to the Bioscleave House in East Hampton, NY – the only example in the USA of the revolutionary, death-defying architecture she developed with Shusaku Arakawa. Gins describes her first encounter with Arakawa, and sheds light on his representative works, including his classic series of artworks, Mechanism of Meaning, which served as the foundation for the procedural architecture projects they later created together. The film also shows visitors navigating in, reacting to, and being transformed by the peculiarities and wonders of the space of Bioscleave House.
Cast:
Madeline Gins
Shusaku Arakawa
Lucas Poole
Sofiane Poole
Gillian Poole
Hubert Poole
Director: Nobu Yamaoka
For more information please visit: https://www.architectural-body.com
Opening Reception: September 24, 6-8PM
Location: 38 St Marks Pl, New York, NY 10003
life and limbs is the fourth exhibition in Swiss Institute’s Architecture and Design Series, curated by Austrian artist Anna-Sophie Berger. Considering corporeality as a primary concern for design, Berger here assembles a group of works that register the body as a habitat that can be imaginatively stretched, altered, modified, adorned, replicated or destroyed. Including works from a variety of disciplines, movements and periods,
The exhibition includes works by Arakawa and Madeline Gins, among other practitioners from a variety of disciplines, movements and periods.
Each work in the exhibition troubles the limits of what a body can consume, process, reach and become, from the metamorphosis that comes from wearing a garment to complete transfigurations into surreal, new beings.
For more information please visit: swissinstitute.net
The New York Times’ T Magazine has published a new article about the work and life of Arakawa and Madeline Gins.
“Could Architecture Help You Live Forever?
For a pair of avant-garde artists, eternal life wasn’t just a dream — it was a possibility. As long, that is, as you were committed to an uncomfortable existence.
The search for immortality has always been a subtext of architecture. From the pyramids, thought to have been designed as massive stairways so the soul of the deceased pharaoh could ascend to the heavens, to the aspirationally named New York Coliseum, the 1956 exhibition space, demolished in 2000, that was Robert Moses’s bid to join the company of the Roman emperors, many structures are created with an eye toward a life everlasting.
But Madeline Gins and her husband, Shusaku Arakawa …had a more literal, if whimsical, take on cheating death: The pair purported to believe that their structures could actually allow their inhabitants eternal life.”
–T Magazine, August 20, 2019
The Museum of Modern Art, Saitama, Japan will present the exhibition, Impossible Architecture, in collaboration with three other museums; Niigata City Art Museum, Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, and the National Museum of Art, Osaka. The exhibition will travel through these four public museums in Japan from February 2019 until March 2020, and will be featuring several artworks by Arakawa and Madeline Gins, including a large-scale model of The Process in Question/Bridge of Reversible Destiny, also known as the “Epinal Project”.
This exhibition featuring an array of international unbuilt architectural designs of the 20th century and onward, has the working title “Impossible Architecture.” The word “impossible” in this context does not mean “impossible” simply because of any radical or unreasonable demands of the architectural design, but refers to the restrictive boundaries of each project’s social time and place, and encourages us to revisit and re-examine the possibilities lying at these architectural frontiers. By placing the focus on the impossibility of this architecture, paradoxically their extreme possibilities and rich potentials come to the fore, abundantly fulfilling the very aim of this exhibition.
Through a diverse mix of plans, models, and other related materials, the “Impossible Architecture” exhibition closely analyzes the extraordinarily imaginative projects of some 40 architects and artists, and casts the spotlight on new forms of architecture that have never been seen before.
Venues, Dates and Locations:
Museum of Modern Art, Saitama
Dates: February 2 – March 24, 2019
Location:
〒330-0061
9-30-1, Tokiwa, Urawa-ku, Saitama-shi, (in Kita-Urawa Park), Japan
Tel: 048-824-0111
https://www.pref.spec.ed.jp
Niigata City Art Museum
Dates: April 13 – July 15, 2019
Location:
〒951-8556 Niigata, Chuo Ward, Nishiohatacho, 5191−9, Japan
Tel: +81-25-223-1622
Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art
Dates: September 18 – December 8, 2019
Location:
1-1 Hijiyamakoen, Minami Ward, Hiroshima, 732-0815, Japan
Tel: +81-82-264-1121
The National Museum of Art, Osaka
Dates: January 7 – March 15, 2020
Location: 4-2-55 Nakanoshima, Kita-ku, Osaka, 530-0005, Japan
Tel: +81-6-6447-4680
This exhibition is organized by The Museum of Modern Art, Satama, Niigata City Art Museum, Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, The Ntaional Museum of Art, Osaka, The Yomiuri Shimbun and the Japan Association of Art Museums.
Building 212, 63 Flushing Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11205
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